My last post dealt with the overheated rhetoric coming out of Hollywood. It is just a sample of what is being said these days.
Now it’s going beyond just talk. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled by a mob at a Mexican restaurant. Now crowds gather at her house. Sarah Sanders was thrown out of a restaurant. According to her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the owner and others followed her across the street and screamed at her while she was at another restaurant. The Florida attorney general was confronted at a movie theater. Congresswoman Maxine Waters threw fuel on the fire. She told a crowd that if they see a cabinet member of the Trump administration, they should “get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them”. In an interview she said people should “absolutely harass” them. She claimed she wanted a peaceful confrontation. Push back and harass are words of violence. She clearly has to know that a mob could very easily turn violent. To their credit, a number of Democrats are condemning her remarks. This is getting out of hand. Congressman Steve Scalise is the first Republican official to be a victim of violence. He almost certainly won’t be the last.
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The Trump administration’s policy of splitting up families of illegal aliens was a very bad idea. He changed course in response to pressure from both parties.
We have seen some interesting spectacles in the last few days. Robert De Niro kicked things off with an obscenity laced rant aimed at the President during an appearance at the Tony awards. Kathy Griffin directed hers at the First Lady. Peter Fonda topped them both by expressing the desire that their young son be locked in a cage with a pedophile. Even some members of Congress got in the act by waving signs and screaming at the President. I presume these people are reasonably intelligent. They can’t believe that these tactics will change the policy or bring people to the Democratic Party. Either they are so full of hate that they can’t think straight or they have another motive. Perhaps it is to gain attention, stroke their ego, endear themselves to the extreme resist movement or some other motive. Republicans owe these people their gratitude. They are the ultimate beneficiaries of these actions. The long-awaited inspector general’s report finally arrived. It showed widespread misbehavior in the FBI. The most chilling part is two senior FBI officials discussing the idea of a plot to ensure Hillary Clinton would win the election.
All this hoopla on the investigation obscures what she actually did. It has been portrayed as a scandal involving her use of a private email account. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Using Google or some other firm shows poor judgement but it’s likely that the emails are fairly secure. Instead, she used her own server. That certainly would be far less secure. Unbelievably, she used the same address for her personal and government emails. Most serious of all, she stored classified documents on the server. At best, she was extremely careless. Her actions may well have been criminal. My primary criteria for a presidential candidate is their judgement. I believe it is more important than experience or political beliefs. I once wrote that her lack of judgment made her unfit for the presidency. Unfortunately, the same thing could be said about her opponent. President Trump has been very prominent on the world stage in recent days. First, he attended the G7 meeting followed by the historic meeting with Kim Jong Un. They had very different results.
International trade is complex. If we are not being treated fairly, we should renegotiate and impose sanctions if they don’t go along. Instead, he went with his usual bull in a china shop approach. He arbitrarily decided that the steel and aluminum industries should be rewarded. Putting on tariffs will allow them to jack up their prices. This will be great for the roughly 150,000 workers. How about the millions who work in industries dependent on steel and aluminum, those affected when other countries retaliate and consumers paying higher prices? He claims this is to ensure we can supply the defense industry. They only use 3% of our domestic production. He further insulted our friends by his boorish behavior at the G7 meeting. He refused to sign the communique and called the Canadian prime minister a liar. This is in sharp contrast to the meeting with North Korea. He went out of his way to be cordial. Some took a moralistic view and said we shouldn’t reward Kim with a presidential sit-down. Our purpose is to reach an agreement, not act like a parent punishing an unruly child. I give him credit for getting farther than any other president. Now the hard work of negotiating an agreement begins. Nobody knows if it will succeed or fail. So, we are treating our most dangerous enemy with kindness and scorning our closest friends. About anything can happen in the Trump administration. June 6, 1944 was one of those rare days when the fate of the world hung in the balances. The greatest armada the world has ever seen was crossing the English Channel to free France from Nazi control.
The Allies went to extraordinary lengths to fool the Germans. They even created a fictitious army, headed by George Patton, complete with rubber tanks and phony radio traffic. This helped them establish a beachhead and end the European war less than a year later. What if it failed? It would have taken months to plan a new landing. If it failed, perhaps the war would have ended with Hitler still in power. Russia was moving quickly from the east. They could have ended up controlling most of Western Europe. Those few soldiers still living are in their nineties. Soon there will be nobody left to give a firsthand account. Hopefully future generations will remember them and honor their accomplishment. |
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